Skateboards line the walls of the Redmond Snow and Skate shop at 315 SW Cascade Ave.

Tucked away off 6th Street, boards and equipment line the walls of the Redmond Snow and Skate shop — waiting for their turns on the mountain as winter bears down on Central Oregon.

The shop, the only snow sports-centric store in Redmond, fills a gap in the northern half of Deschutes County’s outdoor scene with gear and services for the region’s winter sports. It is located at 315 SW Cascade Ave.

“We’re lucky enough to service Madras, Prineville, Crooked River Ranch, Warm Springs,” said Rick Castro, the owner of Redmond Snow and Skate. “All those northern territories, they all used to have to drive to Bend. Now they just come here.”

It was never Castro’s plan to start a shop focusing on snow sports and skateboarding. He spent years working in high-end, fine dining restaurants and auto shops while his wife worked toward her PhD.

His aim was to start a restaurant. But, Castro wanted to dip his toe into business ownership by trying something else first.

A former skateboarder, he realized the local skate park was crowded with youth who were forced to go to Bend for new boards, shoes and accessories after the last Redmond skate shop closed 10 years prior. Castro said the idea for a new skate and snowboard shop began to form and it became a reality in 2017.

The reception from the community over the first five years has been phenomenal, Castro said.

Aside from the gear selection, customers come in for their ski and snowboard services, including waxing and edging. Others have come in for even greater maintenance — such as one customer who exploded his board.

Castro said they trapped all the edges back in, soldered them together, put epoxy inside and clamped everything together. By the end, the customer couldn’t even tell it had shattered.

“Most things are fixable,” Castro said. “Even edges are fixable.”

Castro said another customer came in for a waxing and told him later that he’d never skied that fast before. His friends started coming in to keep up with him.

“My kind of people are skaters, snowboarders, those are my bros,” Castro said. “The kind of people we could sit here and talk about concrete and waxing and stupid stuff like that. That’s what I like to do.”

As time progressed, Castro’s more than 30 years of snowboarding experience began to take over as the focal point of the shop.

“I love snowboarding,” Castro said. “It’s in my blood.”

Castro could talk for hours about the excitement of standing at the top of a run in the morning, looking down at a run of untracked powder.

“I get pumped,” he said. “There’s nothing like that feeling. It’s the whole reason that we do it.”

It’s the reason why he gets up early to get the first lift with his buddies. It’s the reason they close the store on Mondays and Tuesdays so staff can head to the mountains and get their own runs in.

“You get to that lift and you’re just screaming, you can’t get your bindings on fast enough,” he said. “And then you’re in it. Then you’re just hooting and hollering the whole time you’re going down … That’s the best dude, just when you get going and then you’re just like ‘ohhh’ get on top of that powder.”

The customers who visit the shop feed off of Castro’s love of the sport — excitedly talking about runs or gear or time on the mountain. One customer, he said, came back after trying out their specialty 3BT board from Bataleon and said he felt like a ballerina on the snow

“You can’t beat that,” Castro said. “That’s amazing to be on a snowboard and feel that comfortable. We enhanced his sport, that’s why we’re here.”